community service

community service (countable and uncountable, plural community services)

1. Service or activity done for the benefit of the community at large, such as cleaning, fundraising, pro bono professional services, etc.
   • 2019, Michaela Django Walsh, “Partiendo la madre: Borders, Thresholds, and Transnational Sites of Belonging”, in Chiricú Journal‎, volume 3, number 2, →DOI, pages 47 of 41–58:

     Within El Alberto, belonging is premised on the completion of between one and three years of unpaid community service, which all Hñähñu men and unmarried Hñähñu women are required to contribute every eight years. To default on this service is to lose citizenship within the pueblo. This means no longer being able to cultivate the land, build a home there, participate in the decision-making processes that affect the community, or receive the protections it provides.

2. (law) Such work done as alternative for a criminal penalty.

   Synonym: community payback

• voluntary work

• “community service”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.